JK 585 
.fl5 
1913 
Copy 1 






ADDRESS 

OF THE 



ENT OF THE 
FED STATES 



r- 



DELIVERED AT A JOINT SESSION OF 

THE TWO HOUSES OF CONGRESS AT THE 

BEGINNING OF THE FIRST SESSION 

OF THE SIXTY-THIRD CONGRESS 




- APRIL 8, 1913 




WASHINGTON 
1913 



ADDRESS 

OF THE 

PRESIDENT OF THE 
UNITED STATES 

DELIVERED AT A JOINT SESSION OF 

THE TWO HOUSES OF CONGRESS AT THE 

BEGINNING OF THE FIRST SESSION. 

OF THE SIXTY-THIRD CONGRESS 



APRIL 8, 1913 




WASHINGTON 
1913 







D. OF D, 



1913 



Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, Gentlemen of the Congress : 

1 am very glad indeed to have this opportunity to address 
the two Houses directly and to verify for myself the impression 
that the President of the United States is a person, not a mere 
department of the Government hailing Congress from some 
isolated island of jealous power, sending messages, not speak- 
ing naturally and with his own voice — that he is a human 
being trying to cooperate with other human beings in a com- 
mon service. After this pleasant experience I shall feel quite 
normal in all our dealings with one another. 

I have called the Congress together in extraordinary session 
because a duty was laid upon the party now in power at the 
recent elections which it ought to perform promptly, in order 
that the burden carried by the people under existing law may 
be lightened as soon as possible and in order, also, that the 
business interests of the country may not be kept too long in 
suspense as to what the fiscal changes are to be to which they 
will be required to adjust themselves. It is clear to the whole 
country that the tariff duties must be altered. They must be 
changed to meet the radical alteration in the conditions of our 
economic life which the country has witnessed within the last 
generation. While the whole face and method of our indus- 
trial and commercial life were being changed beyond recogni- 
tion the tariff schedules have remained what they were before 
the change began, or have moved in the direction they were 
given when no large circumstance of our industrial develop- 
ment was what it is to-day. Our task is to square them with 
the actual facts. The sooner that is done the sooner we shall 
escape from suffering from the facts and the sooner our men 
of business will be free to thrive by the law of nature (the 
nature of free business) instead of by the law of legislation 
and artificial arrangement. 

We have seen tariff legislation wander very far afield in our 
day — very far indeed from the field in which our prosperity 
might have had a normal growth and stimulation. No one who 
looks the facts squarely in the face or knows anything that 
lies beneath the surface of action can fail to perceive the prin- 
ciples upon which recent tariff legislation has been based. We 
long ago passed beyond the modest notion of " protecting " the 

(3) 



industries of the country and moved boldly forward to the idea 
that they were entitled to the direct patronage of the Govern- 
ment. For a long time — a time so long that the men now active 
in public policy hardly remember the conditions that preceded 
it — w^e have sought in our tariff schedules to give each group 
of manufacturers or producers what they themselves thought 
that they needed in order to maintain a practically exclusive 
market as against the rest of the world. Consciously or un- 
consciously, we have built up a set of privileges and exemptions 
from competition behind which it was easy by any, even the 
crudest, forms of combination to organize monopoly; until at 
last nothing is normal, nothing is obliged to stand the tests of 
efficiency and economy, in our world of big business, but every- 
thing thrives by concerted arrangement. Only new principles 
of action will save us from a iinal hard crystallization of 
monopoly and a complete loss of the influences that quicken 
enterprise and keep independent energy alive. 

It is plain what those principles must be. We must abolish 
everything that bears even the semblance of privilege or of 
any kind of artificial advantage, and put our business men 
and producers under the stimulation of a constant necessity 
to be efficient, economical, and enterprising, masters of com- 
petitive supremacy, better workers and merchants than any in 
the world. Aside from the duties laid upon articles which we 
do not, and probably can not, produce, therefore, and the 
duties laid upon luxuries and merely for the sake of the reve- 
nues they yield, the object of the tariff duties henceforth laid 
must be effective competition, the whetting of American wits 
by contest with the wits of the rest of the world. 

It would be unwise to move tow^ard this end headlong, with 
reckless haste, or with strokes that cut at the very roots of 
what has grown up amongst us by long process and at our own 
invitation. It does not alter a thing to upset it and break it 
and deprive it of a chance to change. It destroys it. We must 
make changes in our fiscal laws, in our fiscal system, whose 
object is development, a more free and wholesome develop- 
ment, not revolution or upset or confusion. We must build up 
trade, especially foreign trade. We need the outlet and the 
enlarged field of energy more than we ever did before. We 
must build up industry as well, and must adopt freedom in the 
place of artificial stimulation only so far as it will build, not 
pull down. In dealing with the tariff the method by which 
this may be done will be a matter of judgment, exercised item 
by item. To some not accustomed to the excitements and 
responsibilities of greater freedom our methods may in some 



respects and at some points seem heroic, but remedies may be 
heroic and yet be remedies. It is our business to make sure 
that they are genuine remedies. Our object is clear. If our 
motive is above just challenge and only an occasional error of 
judgment is chargeable against us, we shall be fortunate. 

We are called upon to render the country a great service in 
more matters than one. Our responsibility should be met and 
our methods should be thorough, as thorough as moderate 
and well considered, based upon the facts as they are, and 
not worked out as if we were beginners. We are to deal with 
the facts of our own day, with the facts of no other, and to 
make laws which square with those facts. It is best, indeed 
it is necessary, to begin with the taritf. I will urge nothing 
upon you now at the opening of your session which ca^n obscure 
that first object or divert our energies from that clearly defined 
duty. At a later time I may take the liberty of calling your 
attention to reforms which should press close upon the heels 
of the tariff changes, if not accompany them, of which the chief 
is the reform of our banking and currency laws; but just now 
I refrain. For the present, I put these matters on one side and 
think only of this one thing — of the changes in our fiscal system 
which may best serve to open once more the free channels of 
prosperity to a great people whom we would serve to the 
utmost and throughout both rank and file. 

I thank you for your courtesy. 

o 



^fin 



LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 






